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Thursday, January 28, 2010

Man Defense and Zone Defense Similarities

As a high school coach who has worked with athletes who participate in multiple sports, I feel that it is necessary to have a defensive philosophy that is transferable from your man defense to your zone defense. For example:

In our man defensive set, we want to do the following:
1. Force to the ball to a side
2. Play on the line up line defense
3. When the ball is at the wing, we want to play on the extreme high hip and force the ball to the baseline
4. Full front the post who is there for help defense or if we want to trap
5. Deny ball reversal
6. Keep the ball out of the gut, whether it is by pass or dribble

When I coached girls, I like using a match up 3 - 2 zone defense as our base zone because it is easy to apply our man to man defensive objectives which is less for our players to remember. In our 3-2 match up, we can easily apply our man defensive principles, thus there is less for our players to have remember when we switch from our man defense to our zone defense.

Regardless if you buy into this philosophy, a major component is your ability as a coach to get your players to buy into your system.